348 - ​​How to Use Listener Voice to Create Community

0:05 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Thursday, July 31st, 2025, and today we're opening up the mailbag again and diving into your podcasting questions. From newbie tips to boosting audience interaction, we've got you covered. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse or Chatter, hit the share button. Bottom of the screen on Clubhouse, top of the screen on Chatter. And if you're listening via podcast, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. Good morning again podcasting morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronik and on stage currently with me we have my Co hosts, producer Ashley Feller, Nick Naulback, Dr. Faye and Sid Meadows.

1:36 I should say Amanda Sharp is taking the week off. She had a birthday just the other day and she's taking a week of vacation. So we wish Amanda a very happy birthday and a very enjoyable vacation. I think it's a staycation from the way I understand it, and good for her. That's what I do. I like those staycations. Dr. Do you ever go on a vacation? I don't like traveling. So that's the same as Amanda. Yeah, I used to do it for a living. I mean, I used to be a musician that was on the road and I just freaking hate it. When I came back to the States, 'cause I was on the road in Asia, I would get the shakes if I had to drive past the airport.

2:18 It was crazy. I just hate traveling. I hear you. It's not something that I can relate to. I mean, I don't love the actual act of traveling, but I do like going to new places or visiting old places that I haven't been to in a while so that the it's the act of traveling I don't particularly love. But I hear you and you're certainly not alone. Like I said, Amanda, not a big traveler. She's shared with us before. I don't even like seeing new places. It's just I have animals and I'm so I just want to be around my animals is really what I want. OK, That's really my happy place.

2:59 Yeah, I hear you. And cats aren't always the best of travelers either. And I'm thinking, I'm thinking, yeah, I'm thinking that because we don't usually have that problem unless, of course, we're flying. We don't take our dog with us, but our dog pretty much goes wherever we go. If it's a car ride, even if it's a long 1, he comes with us, he goes everywhere with us. So again, can't quite relate, but I know that cats are not usually the best of travellers. Yeah. OK. So today we're going to dig into the mailbag and it's actually both, at least the two questions that I have here. And we do have some other stockpiled, but both aren't actually mailbag in the sense that they don't come directly from a listener.

3:44 We found some of these on Reddit, some of these on Facebook, etcetera. And we felt like they were worth digging into. And so I'm pausing and I'm using filler words like. And so because I was debating whether or not I'm just having a day this morning and I was debating, do I really want to share that? Because that doesn't always set the tone very well. So there's a little tip for podcasters. You got to be careful how you set the tone of a show, right? Let's. So, yeah. But because like, here's what I'm getting at. I'm having a morning. It's not worth getting into right now. And I'm here saying, hey, bear with me, I'm having a bad day or I'm having a bad morning.

4:27 I'm almost setting myself up for kind of a crappy show, or at least I'm setting that expectation In your head. There is a line with authenticity because you just have to tread lightly. It's just as far as how you're setting your show's tone. If you're going to set the audience up and say I'm not really feeling it today, well, that might cause some people to just jump ship and just say, all right, well then I'm not feeling feeling like sitting here and listening to it or, you know, they're just now going to sit there and listen for those signs of you not feeling it. Or listening for a train wreck. So let me just point out a couple of things. One of the things that sets you apart from other podcasters is that you have a crew of people that you say, yeah, I'm just not, I'm not feeling it.

5:22 And so the crew pitches in. That is not what most podcasters have. The other thing that sets you apart is that you are here every single solitary. That is another thing that sets you apart from other podcasters. I think you're entitled to have a day. Yeah, and I do believe I'm entitled to have a day. And again, it's, it's, it's for me, it's about setting the right tone for the show. And yes, you're right, DRI do have the disadvantage and you know, 'cause you're the first person I speak to in the morning before the show starts.

6:02 And, and you're one of those people that definitely has my back in those situations. And you jump in and help me kind of craft the what the show's going to look like in the morning, especially on days like this. And a lot of people have Co hosts and I think that's something that you can rely on too. If you're not feeling it that day, I think it's important for you to at least express it to your Co host so that your Co host can maybe do a little bit more of the heavy lifting that day. I think that's really important. Absolutely. OK, cool. All right. So with that, I also wanted to say stop and say, hey, Sid, I saw on LinkedIn you're going to podcast movement and I don't feel like I knew if you were prior to your trip. So did you just make this decision recently or is this it? Just that I'm getting hip to it now? Good morning, everybody.

6:54 No, you're not necessarily. I mean, everybody's getting hip to it at the same time. So I got a obviously it's here in Dallas, which is super convenient for me. And I thought about going, I saw that Katie Brinkley was going and I've never met Katie. And I've obviously known Katie for several years, like a lot of us. And the ambassador, the podcast event space ambassador reached out to me and said, are you going to be there? And am I going to get to meet you? That's all I'm thinking about it, not sure yet. And then the next thing I know, a ticket showed up in my e-mail. So I got a ticket from the podcast ambassador, who we all know and love. And so she's like, OK, now I have to make sure that I meet you.

7:36 So I'm going to get to meet Paula and Katie Brinkley and probably a few others that I have never met in person. And so it's I'm just right now I'm trying to decide, am I going to drive down there? It's about 45 minutes from me. I'm trying to decide if I'm going to drive down there and spend one night at the Gaylord or just just go one day. I need to look at the schedule to see what the schedule is. But yes, I am going because the podcast ambassador sent me a ticket. Paula. And pretty much beat me up to say you better show up. That's funny. Yeah. So OK, so here I have to admit I was feeling a little selfish and a little like, darn it, because I was hoping your first time meeting Katie would be at Empowered Podcasting because she's coming to Empowered Podcasting.

8:26 She's speaking there as well. I saw the next day that she after I saw that she was a speaker at Podcast Movement, I saw she was a speaker at Empowered Podcasting. So I'm excited to see her twice now and here right after five years of never meeting Katie and being a huge fan and an avid listener to her, A supporter for podcast Plural. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, I am excited to see you at Podcast Movement and I've been fortunate enough to meet you face to face already. And it's going to be cool to see all a lot of us getting together as a group for the first time. It'll be really fun, especially because these are also clubhouse connections, right?

9:06 Said like this is where you met Katie, where we met, etcetera. So cool to see. And by the way, before we dive into this first mailbag question, Mike Short says in the chat regarding the whole thing about setting the tone, what we were talking about earlier, he says you're entitled, but you got to put on your game face. I remember feeling out of it when I was a nightclub DJ but had to decide to put on a great show that almost always actually put me in a great mood. And Mike, I can't, I couldn't agree more with you. The one thing that I know for podcast with podcasting for me is that no matter how I'm feeling before I press record, how I'll just say it, how shitty I'm feeling before I press record. The moment I hit record, the moment I sit down. Especially in this format on this show with all of you, it does all go out the window.

10:02 I do put on that game face and I don't even intentionally necessarily do it other than knowing, OK, I'm hitting record, I'm going live. I've got people depending on me, but I that that's the extent of it. I don't have to sit there and pump myself up and put on that quote UN quote game face. It's an instinct. I just go right to it. Podcasting is a secret therapy for a podcast host. I think for in many cases, not for everybody, but in many cases. Let's go to the mailbag. This one we found on Reddit, like I said earlier, comes from somebody named Riley Says. Hello my fellow podcasters. I was wondering what you all use or what you do to make your podcast more interactive for your listeners. I want my listeners to be able to not just e-mail me, but maybe click on a link that will take them to a comment box. They can write something small and such as such as topics they want to hear, my podcast, go over ideas for quick hot topics that we have at the beginning of each episode, etcetera. But I don't know of any other way of doing so besides telling them at the end of each episode to send an e-mail or messages to the social media pages.

11:20 Any tips, tricks, or suggestions would be great. Thanks. So I'm curious, Oh, and Ashley, why don't you chime in with that reaction that you just shared in the chat? Don't. Tell them at the end, tell them in the middle, tell them kind of towards the beginning, but don't wait till the end because the average person likely doesn't listen to the end. Yeah, I'm with you. It might be one of the biggest podcasting advice mistakes out there, in the sense that for so many years in podcasting, I hear the advice, do the call to action at the end. And yes, of course that's a great time to do it. And it's not the only time to do it. If you're going to, if you want your audience to do something, you can't wait till the very end to ask them to do it. Because the truth of the matter is, statistically speaking, not every single person who presses play is listening to all 60 minutes, all 30 minutes, however long your episode is. They're not listening all the way through. Not everyone.

12:28 And some of those people who might have bailed early could have been the ones that would have taken action on that call to action. So the idea is, yeah, let's sprinkle it throughout the whole episode. Sprinkle it, share what you want them to do throughout the whole thing. Work it in to the conversation. You want them to send you an e-mail or DM you or whatever you want them to. You'd want them to know you have some kind of resource, a free resource you're giving away. Don't wait till the end. I want them to know even at the beginning that you have a free resource and maybe you want to tease it, right? Maybe it's not appropriate at the beginning to say it because you need them to kind of go through the motions, go through the journey of the episode, and then you hit them with the resource.

13:19 But you can tease it. Hey, stick around till the very end and I've got a free gift for you. So that's something to consider. Anyone else have any suggestions? So two things. One, good old mid roll. Normally it's for kind of advertising, but you can treat it as a call to action, as an advertisement. And I don't know who's hosting this person's podcast, but if they were on Spotify, Spotify now has a little. Don't they have a comment section? They do, and actually lately I've noticed a lot of people seem to be using that for with us lately. You've been getting more comments over there. Awesome, Spotify and YouTube, which they both have the comment section.

14:07 Sid, go ahead and help me out because I'm on my way to the kitchen. I was going to say what Ashley said, which is don't wait till the end. That's a really bad idea. And the other thing that I was going to add to that is when you do get a comment or an engagement or a question from a listener they lighted at the beginning of your show, like say, oh, we got a comment from Ashley who said that in the last episode, blah, blah, blah. And then talk about it for a second. And the fact that you spotlighted a listener, in my opinion, actually will encourage other listeners to do the same thing, to take that same action, right, and to want to have their comment shared as well. So I think that's a great way to drive engagement is to highlight the comment, talk about it.

14:51 The same thing with the review, like if you get a review from somebody, then read the review and then ask for more reviews with because then that will encourage people to do it. Ashley, did you want to add something? Yeah, I just wanted to draw attention to Mike's comment in the chat about Speak Pipe and also, you know, put that in combination of what Sif is saying and maybe you could play your Speak Pipe messages on your show. I love Speak Pipe. I think that's a great idea. We've talked about Speak Pipe. I'm. Curious, does anybody by just a show of hands anybody on stage use speak pipe? I've heard about it but I've never used. I'm just curious if anybody's actually using it. I've used it and I have some clients that use it as well. It it works really well and what I love about it is they leave the message, then you get that little sound bite the MP3 file and you can work it right into your show. Play it for your audience.

15:44 It works very smoothly. Overall I've I've had a lot of success with it and anyone else. Mark, do you know how much it cost? Go ahead, Nick. I. Can't remember how much it cost specifically. I do. It's free. It's absolutely free when? I was doing the 95 podcast. I built an entire episode around the Speak Pipe recordings that I got. So I was in the community was telling them about the episode that I wanted to put together and I was basically getting input from other creators, podcasters to like give advice or talk about how they got started in podcasting. I can't exactly remember, but I basically used those little snippets and then like spoke to him.

16:24 So it was almost kind of like I was having a conversation with him even though I didn't have each individual. But it's kind of a a cool way to mix up the episodes and get other people involved. I love that idea. Thank you, Nick. All right, let's check in with some people who have joined us. And by the way, Jonathan Howard has joined us on the clubhouse stage. He left chatter to come over here to join us. When I shut that room down, unfortunately a little too soon. I should have paid attention to what was going on with my board anyway. And Speaking of Rd. Caster Pro boards, there's actually an answer that I can give this particular question with an with the new feature that the Road Caster Pro has added. I'll get into that momentarily. Let's first say hello to our guests that have joined us on stage.

17:10 First, hello to Janae. Janae, no pressure, but I just wanted to make sure. Did you want to add anything to this conversation about making your show more interactive with your audience? Good morning everyone. Thank you for that question. I am looking to do that same for my podcast even though I've done so many episodes. My question would be around the same topic. Even though I have a guest related show where I have guests coming on, how do I make it more interactive for audiences listening? One simple way would be to really engage your audience and get them to ask questions that you can then ask your guest. And you know who does this really well is actually a mutual friend of ours, Janae Heather Parody does this often I see. And what she does is she goes into her Instagram stories and she posts something about an upcoming guest. And it's usually a few different stories in a row, right? She'll post something about a guest. And really what she's doing, in my opinion, is building up our interest, her audience's interest in that guest that's coming by just sharing information, highlights or I should say insights from that guest. And then she'll a new story will pop up and she'll say, I'm interviewing this person.

18:29 I need some help coming up with some good questions. What should I ask? And she often times gets a lot of questions and then she'll share and read those questions on her show. I don't hear her often saying, oh, this question comes from one of my listeners, so and so. And then ask the interviewer or the interviewee, I would suggest to her if I were sitting down with her right now or sitting down with somebody who wants to do something similar is yeah, actually bring in your guests, say their name if they give you permission. Yeah, This comes from my listener, Jinade. And Jinade wants to know, how do you do X, right. That gets people feeling like they're really a part of the show.

19:11 That's a way to make them feel like it's interactive, calling out their names, saying that they're contributing to the content. That goes a long way. So that's one, one other way you could do it and you could also. I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait because I want to share this feature from Rd. but I want to first say hello to Jeff. Jeff, good morning. Welcome back. It's been a minute since we've had you. Did you want to add it all to this? Yeah, you kind of, we're just touching on the expansion of what Sid had said that I kind of wanted to highlight. Sid was talking about commenting on people directly encouraging people to how that might encourage people to participate. And I want to just kind of call out, you know, that is very much a stage crafty kind of task.

20:01 If you think about it. You see it in concerts a lot. You know, we see it in the music industry a lot. And I just want to highlight it because. Apart from the idea that you're encouraging people to offer suggestions or ask questions, sometimes as hosts, that makes us feel like we have to then respond to every question. Oh, well, this guy asked a question, I have to answer his question too because he asked it and we don't have to do that. The point of of part of the point of doing that, and this is kind of what you were just talking about, Mark, is when you call attention to somebody in your podcast, when you call attention to somebody in the audience, you know, particularly in a concert, we've all seen this.

20:52 It's not that you then expect to raise your hand and be called out on the audience. It just shows you kind of that you can put yourself in the place of the person that just got singled out and you know that the host, you know that the artist gives a crap about who's in the audience because they have highlighted somebody in the audience and you are also in the audience. You don't expect Garth Brooks to single out everybody in the audience. It wouldn't even be possible. But the fact that he singled out somebody let's you know that he cares about the audience because you can put yourself in the place of that example. And I think that also is in play with podcasting.

21:34 So we don't have to feel like we have to answer every question, just answer some of them. It shows you care about your audience. Thank you, Jeff. Yeah, I do. I see that. I agree with that. There is something when, yeah, using that analogy of a live show, when you see the the talent up there interacting with the audience, obviously that person can't do it with, can't respond and can't speak with everybody in the audience. And it still shows that they care. And I think that's that is the value that we take away from this. Yeah, absolutely. Jeff, I'm with you there. And Jonathan, Jonathan just messaged me that he wanted to respond to this as well. So go for it, Jonathan. Yeah. And I'm going to say I, I understand in a live situation where you don't necessarily want to do that, but wherever possible, answering all the questions of your audience is going to be a strong move.

22:25 That's going to keep you show that you're investing in what your audience needs from you. Because a lot of times those questions are going to be questions that multiple people have. That's just what I would recommend is whenever possible, answer all the questions they've got. Obviously some of them are going to be similar things that you can roll into one, but wherever possible, answer all the questions you can. Yeah, I can see what you're saying there. And I think that, yeah, like you said, there's going to be a lot of similar types of questions throughout the course of your podcasts. You can lump all of those together when necessary. And sometimes there's going to be some questions that just don't really fit right, that you just can't answer because they're they just don't work with what you're doing on the show.

23:07 But for the most part there, the question should be relevant and helpful to the rest of your audience if you are able to answer those questions. So yeah, I think that there is a little bit of, it's a little bit of both to be a little wishy washy about it. But I think that you can't answer every single question. And it's important to really take all those questions seriously because if they're coming from your audience, even if it's one question from one person, there are probably others in your audience that have a similar or the same question. Janae, I saw you had your hand up again. Did you want to add on to this? Yeah, based on what Jonathan said, you know, it could be a really long episode if you're just answering all the questions that you got.

23:53 And this is something that Jay Klaus recently did. He said I got so many questions I had to break it into two episodes. So he did create 2 specific episodes just answering questions. And if you don't know who Jay Class is of creator science, he's got an amazing community as well on Circle and tons of amazing people come through there as well. Yeah, thank you. Janae J Klaus, great example. And there is another let's look talk about some other ways that we can actually connect you. So speak pipe was shared earlier and there's a new feature that just came out recently from the road caster Pro Rd. added a feature, which, if those of you who've been around the podcasting morning chat for years, one of the O GS Chuck had actually messaged me not too long ago. He was telling me that I guess he's part of Rhodes beta people, beta clients, beta customers, and he actually knew about this feature before it came to the public. It's called call me Rd.

25:02 Call me and I'll read just the blurb about it and then we can talk a little bit about it if anyone has any questions. It's a new feature for the Road Caster Pro 2 and the Duo. Designed to facilitate remote audio communication, Call Me provides direct, low latency audio connections over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. This functionality allows users to connect to remote guests from other Rd. Caster units or via a web browser, integrating their audio directly into the Road Caster Pro for broadcasting or recording. Developed in partnership with with Vortex Communications, it is designed to overcome the core limitations of standard voice over IP, which typically delivers low quality, heavily compressed audio that doesn't integrate as seamlessly into professional work flows.

25:54 So the way that this is explaining it as far as the quality goes, if any of you listen to say, a radio show and I'm the one I'm thinking of that, that I've heard this done before, but actually Smartless is a good example too. I'll use Smartless a lot of times they'll have a guest come on and it sounds like that guest is in the same room, right? It sounds like the, the, the audio quality is so clear. And that's what this is basically saying that it does is where people can go through a web browser and they're going to get the real high quality sound. It's not going to sound like you're on a Bluetooth phone, right?

26:34 It's not going to sound like you're calling from your car per SE. It's going to be that high quality, that high audio fidelity, which is really cool. And more importantly to the question, this is a great way you could incorporate your audience. You could have a segment where it's like a call in segment, just like on a radio show. You can give the link to your audience, tell them, you know, here's the link, call us, give us a question, and you can actually interact with them live. Something like this would be a wonderful addition to what this person's trying to do. Would this be a feature someone would use? Because if we were looking on the other side of the coin, I think that some of the challenges could be how do we get our audience to do that? The challenge becomes we're trying to make this appointment. Listening now, it's not just because if it's on demand, that doesn't do you any good.

27:32 If you want live callers and your your listeners are used to listening on demand, you now have to train them, for lack of a better term, to know OK, you have to call in at this time, on this day. I think it's it can still work. I do. I think that if you pepper all the socials with it and say, hey, at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, I'm going to be recording my podcast and I would love for you to be on it, for your voice to be heard on it. So please call this toll free number, blah, blah, blah, blah while I'm recording. Let's do this experiment together. A lot of times people if you say let's do this social experiment, a lot of times people would say, oh, I'm going to get involved in that.

28:20 I used to work in Vegas and in those wee hours when there's hardly anyone walking around the casino, we have something called shills who sit at the poker table at the 21 tables and play with house money. So you need some shills to call in and to kind of show people what it's like. What it what do you do, you know? So yeah, set up some shells, pepper social media with when you're recording. Yeah, I think it can be done. And I'd love the tip Dr. when you're first getting started with this, hey, let's try this social experiment together. It does perk up an audience's ears for sure.

29:04 I love that. I love that strategy. Thank you for that in. Fact. Why don't you just name the damn podcast? Hey, there you go. There you go. OK, we have Sid and Ashley who want to chime in. Let's go to Sid first. He did raise his hand first. Go for it, Sid. Kind of adding on to what Der was just talking about. If you are having in your industry or in your niche a really powerful thought leader or guest, come on, you can promote the same way. Like have you ever wanted to ask Mark Ronnick question? Well, Mark's going to be on my show today at join me at 7:00 PM Eastern Time and dial in and ask your question live and hear the response live. I think that's a great way to promote your show, to promote the guest, especially if it's kind of a high-powered guest, right, and to bring in some engagement. So I really like that idea, a way to use it, the road Buster feature.

29:56 Yeah. Thank you, Sid. Yeah. And that feature again is called Call Me and Ashley. Did you want to add something? Sure. I think that there could be potential. This sort of reminds me back in the days when, you know, you heard radio DJs incentivize people for calling in. Like for the the third caller on Tuesday, they get some sort of a reward. And I think there's some sort of adaptability there for podcasts. I don't know what the incentive would be, but I think that someone could get creative and like saying, hey, if you call in and you know, maybe share, for example, if it's an advice podcast, maybe a situation you're going through, we will offer you a discount on whatever product is tied to that podcast.

30:43 That's just, you know, off the top of my head. Yeah, thank you, Ashley. Yeah, Janae, go ahead. I remember back in the days I would listen to the radio 98.7 and they were like, hey, if you call in you can win a ticket to Coachella or ticket to latest concert that's coming in and people will just dial in like calling #9 was going to get the get the tickets. So that was a pretty fun experience. And I don't know about you, but I did try to get me some free tickets. Oh yeah, when I was a kid, I was all over that. Be the 107th caller on Q1O7 and win $107.00 in cash. I actually. And actually it wasn't Q1O7. Yes, that's a real former radio station in DC.

31:26 It was, I think WAVA 105 and it was win $105. And I as a kid was so into that. I was like a young teenager and I think I won two months in a row. I had to wait 30 days after I won the first time and then I tried again once the 30 days are up and I won it again. And I was very proud of myself for that. I mean, you know, as a young teenager, winning over $200 cash within a couple months is, is great money. Yeah. And I think. What did you spend it on? What did you you want to know what I spent it on? I do want to know. It was right around Halloween and I really wanted to be Freddy Krueger for Halloween and the mask and the costume was really expensive and my mom was like, hell no, you are not.

32:14 I'm not spending that kind of money on a costume you're going to wear once. So I said, all right, I'll win the money. Yeah. Yep. I do think that this whole idea could very well be something that takes off. And I'm not necessarily necessarily saying it's the call me feature, but I do think that this is a missing element from podcasting that as the technology gets better and more creative, I think that we could start seeing this in the near future more often on podcasts where listeners are calling in just like radio. And I know I saw in the chat that there were some questions about the tech of this Call Me feature. And Nick, if you are available, I know that you were kind of in that chat having that discussion. Any highlights or questions that stick out to you from the chat? As far as questions around the Call me feature? Does it have to be live or can it operate like speak pipe to where you people can call in and you have the recording of the message?

33:23 That's a great question. I don't see that as let me just see the advanced Calling Features integration facilitates professional call handling experience Features include direct Rd. caster to Rd. caster calling. It doesn't sound like they're yeah, this sounds like it's for live stuff. It says the IT has the capability to queue up two callers while one is live and straightforward web calling for guests to join via a browser link. It sounds like that this is all real time stuff. You would want to use speak pipe for more of like your voicemail feature if you will. Michael Stewart in the chat, he brought up a pretty good point as well. He said not really excited about not having control of what questions are answered.

34:07 Yeah, questions are answered, prefer that they get submitted and screened before heading record, which is a very valid. Point, It's a valid point and I couldn't do this show if I was that concerned, right? I mean, we have people jumping up here all the time, and there are sometimes people that jump up here that really don't have much to contribute on occasion, right? For the most part, we've got this awesome community and everybody's got lots to contribute. Sometimes people pop in, they're a little bit disruptive, even if they're not intentionally doing so. And I think that's something you roll with. And that's the beauty and magic of editing. If it didn't work out, Mike, you can just edit it out late and then nobody will be the wiser.

34:50 That was going along with the question of is it, can you record or does it have to be live? And you said it doesn't look like there is a record. Yeah. Aspect so so. People can't submit. Like you wouldn't necessarily have to do your podcast live, but you would have like a moment where you could have live conversations with people and those conversations are getting recorded to that point. You could build the episode. Around it, that's true. So one thing you could do is almost have like an office hours, if you will, right? Something that you can promote. Hey, community, every other Wednesday at 12:00 PM Eastern Time, I'm going to be live answering your questions.

35:35 Here's the browser link that road provides. Here's the browser link to call in and speak with me live directly and we'll record the conversation. And that conversation may be added onto that might be part of the next episode of this podcast. I think that works really well. But yeah, this is designed to be live, but you can do it. And I guess, like Nick is saying, in all sorts of ways, including recording beforehand. All right, I'm going to go to Jinaid. And then Meg has joined us on stage. So we'll go to Meg next. Go ahead, Jinaid. It sounds like a live call in feature where you call into a recording, but it doesn't have to be live streaming out like what we're doing here on the radio.

36:19 Really cool experience with it. Last week with Tanya, we could talk about it later. She did a live. She's like, hey, this big, this thing just came out and I wanted to test it. She put a web link up, punch it in and it sounded really good. Really cool stuff. Yeah, cool. Thank you, Janae and Meg, welcome back to the stage. It feels like everybody's coming home after a little vacation that Jeff hasn't been around in a little bit. Now we've got Meg back up on stage. It's great to see everybody go. For it Meg nice to see everyone I happenstance to radio my radio show's been syndicated. I started in I heart Providence and it's not my full time gig. My full time gig is seeing patients and doing nutrition. But my show does get put up into a repurpose, into a podcast. So I just wanted to say that first. But first, I have experience taking calls in radio live on a news station.

37:12 Actually, Mel Robbins and I were both on the same New York Internet station where you could do either. Sometimes they took calls live while you did the show and sometimes they played the shows prerecorded. So it can be done either way obviously. But I will tell you this, a very well known radio person once told me that the they consider taking calls the riskiest type of a radio show because it can take you down a lot of different rabbit holes. And you're having people on that have absolutely no experience. Like they could be, you know, it could be from all walks of life calling in and you think you're going to do a show about XY and Z and it goes down a whole different rabbit hole. So it is a little bit riskier.

37:59 And some people are going to find that they don't they really don't like it as much as just talking like on a podcast. So I think we'll just see more variety. I mean, I think there's something, there's a lot of different ways we could do it, but it is considered the riskiest type of form of, I guess we could say podcast or radio because it's it's going to start happening and podcasting too. And it's not going to be any different than when it's a, you know, a regular radio station or it's a podcast. Yeah, agreed. And I think that this agreed to a point because at the same time this goes back to what I said earlier about to Mike, right. It's there's always the power of editing. And that's the beauty of podcasting is that it's on demand. So we have that freedom to to reduce the risk and eliminate the disruptions.

38:43 But it is its own thing. Yeah, go ahead. Clubhouse put me in the naughty chair, so I'm sorry my pepper is not rising. Wait a minute. And again, just for those who don't know why we keep saying Peppers on Clubhouse, we use the emoji. It's a pepper so that somebody wants to speak. That's the notification to me that someone wants to talk. So Meg, I have a question for you. I know on most radio stations that there is a producer that is kind of, you know, sifting through those calls and they line it up for the on air personality. Is that not what you had? Yeah, you definitely have that, but you have to understand that there's sometimes people that say they're going to ask a question and they ask something totally, totally different. So they they line it up for you And then like there's a there how it was at the radio station I was at. It was like, well, no, actually on the Internet station too, both stations have very similar platforms. It's like you have Mary from North Dakota on a line too, and she has a question about high cholesterol. You have Joe on, you know, from New York, and he has a question of blah, blah, blah, blah.

39:55 Doesn't mean they're going to ask that question, though. You got to keep that in mind. True, true. You have people who will sabotage you. That's like they set out and they wake up thinking, who am I going to sabotage today? So yeah, that is true. I saw that Jeff wanted to chime in. I saw him come off mic. And then we'll go to Roy Field, who's joined us on stage. Jeff, did you want to add something? To my earlier point, This is why I was saying we don't have to answer everybody's questions because, you know, whether they're intentionally trying to sabotage or not, they may have formed their question 15 minutes ago and waited for 15 minutes to ask it, and now the question is irrelevant. Or maybe it's been answered three times, but they haven't been listening.

40:39 They've been thinking about how what they're going to say for 15 minutes. I'm reminded of when I was substitute teaching and I was, I was working in a kindergarten class and we were trying to get the kindergarten class to all participate in the conversation we about recycling. What can you recycle? And nobody would answer the question. Nobody would raise their hand. And then somebody said slowly raise their hand. And they said, well, can you recycle a glass Coke bottle? Yes, Mark, that's a great answer. Well, then everybody's hands went up and it was a Doctor Pepper bottle, a Mr. Pip bottle, a Gatorade bottle.

41:21 And that's where I think your point, Mark, is, is important is your first burden is to the audience at large maintaining the conversation, maintaining the brand, maintaining the flow of what you're doing. And you can't do that if you allow everybody to respond. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for elaborating on that. Yeah, totally makes sense. And I'm going to keep it going and check in with Roy Field. Roy Field, another person. It's been a minute. Welcome back. And what did you want to add to the conversation? Just that for me, my kind of podcast journey that listeners being part of the show and you can physically hear their voices with such an integral part of me building community actually is my second podcast.

42:08 My second podcast that I did was a thing called Dum Dee Dum, which was a fans after show on a radio soap in the UK and we used feet pipe so that listeners could then call in and talk about their predictions or their reactions. And that was such a key way of building up a very small podcast up to something where we ended up doing live shows in the UK. We did one in Canada, etcetera, in the time when when I was with that podcast. And I think it's an invaluable tool if you have a small and a niche community. Not only does it seem bigger, but it seems incredibly intimate. And then we ended up having meta conversations. And one of the most powerful was at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine because we had listeners all around the world.

42:57 There's a guy called John, I think he was an American, who was a part of the podcast crew. And for about two months beforehand, he was ringing in and giving his weekly diagnosis of what was happening on the radio, on the soap that we were obsessively talking about. And when Russia invaded Ukraine, he disappeared for two weeks. You then had on the second week, people calling in by speed pipes is not in real time saying, where is John? Is he OK The third week? Then he responded and was so emotional and he said, I've moved to Levov with my family. Did you give that harm's way? But thank you to the community. So it's just a small but powerful way of showing that if you're running a small podcast, if you can as part of your output, include the voices of your listeners. It has an incredibly powerful effect in terms of all those people who are isolated listen to your podcast because they visibly hear other people.

43:54 They feel part of our community, and then they talk amongst themselves, not only through your platform, but then also via e-mail, etcetera. Then the last thing I would say is, well, I no longer do that podcast, but I've handed it off to other presenters is that we used during COVID and I know this stream Yard and other platforms now, but we just did it via Zoom. And that was a very easy way of us having an interview with the actors of the soap opera. But then the listeners could physically see each other because we put it live also on YouTube. But obviously it went out as audio as well. And then you could curate who could actually ask a question just a very simple but powerful way and also a a platform which was very democratic. Everybody understood Zoom.

44:47 So yes, I'm all for using the listeners as content. So how much so that I did a course about it and I've done a couple of presentations about your listeners are your content. It's a very powerful tool. Thank you, Roy Field. Yeah, I'm with you, I think. Look, I've built this whole show based on utilizing and including, yes, everybody's voices. Yeah. And it, it works well, I have. We've built a community on having a conversation together through the podcast. I'm totally with you there. There's another solution. If let's say you don't have a Rd. Caster Pro 2 or Duo, and let's say you don't have the budget to purchase one. There are other solutions where you can actually incorporate people live and, and I'm going outside of Clubhouse, outside of Chatter.

45:43 This is something that's been around since 2011. I've as you know, I've been around podcasting a little bit longer than that and I started using it not too long after 2011. It's called Call in Studio, Call in studio.com and this works like a radio station, but it's all over the Internet. You do get a phone number assigned to you, but it works like radio in the sense that you get a screen that shows your queue of callers. It even has a caller ID. So you see the the caller numbers and if you have a producer or a call Screener, that person can interact with each individual caller.

46:31 Find out like we were talking about earlier, what do you want to ask, right? So then the caller gives that information and then the producer or Screener can go into that queue on that screen and type in the person's name, type in the question so that you know as the host who you're going to next and you can pick and choose from that. There's no particular order you have to go in. It works very well. You can get a local number, you can get a, a toll free number. It's, I think, very well priced. So we're talking if you are in the United States, if you want that local number, it's 1099 a month plus three cents a minute.

47:16 And if you want a toll free number, it jumps up to 1299 and almost 6 cents a minute. But this, you know, if you have a thriving community who you know, wants to interact more, this could be a great solution. And again, maybe a more affordable one than purchasing a $700.00 Rd. Caster Pro 2. And I'm not trying to turn you away from that because if you already have the Road Caster Pro 2 or the duo, I would encourage you to just try it and see what you think. Hey Mark, how much is that road caster? Well the road caster Pro 2 is yeah is like 699 I think. Howie.

47:58 Yeah, the duo is a little more affordable. I think it's like 499 and if I'm looking at it looks like the call me. Yeah, there. I think you might have to pay for this call me feature. I'm not sure 'cause they do show these three tiers. They call them Rd. Call me Light, Rd. Call me and Road Call Me Pro. But they don't have any pricing attached to that structure to those tiers. So I'm not sure how that works. If you have to actually pay more, you do have to register to use it, which you when you go to the road call me link, there's a little Register here button and you just sign up and I guess maybe that's where we would find out. Let me just see for you.

48:43 I was. Going to say Dr. you should. You should check apps sumo. I'm sure they have a deal on a Rd. That's only software. Then you could trade in some of your points, trade in some of your points and get out. I do have a little over $300 on that in Appsumo Bucks as they say. Thank you. Unfortunately it's Appsumo. So it's only software, it's not hardware. So she can't do that unless maybe you could get the the software, the call me software or something like that. But anyway, yes, so there are other features. I really encourage you if you are in intrigued by the call insurance feature where you can have people call in live, I would say check in on call in studio if you don't have a roadcaster pro. It works really well.

49:30 And it, I don't know, like I've shared with you before, I'm a radio file, a radio junkie. And there's something really cool about having that screen up that really resembles a radio station where you can go and pick and choose who your callers, who you're going to speak to on that caller list. OK, listen, we only have a few minutes before the top of the hour. And I think this is a good place to stop, especially because I'm travelling today. I'm hitting the road today heading to Maryland to see some family, then go to Atlantic City for a couple days before I go volunteer at that summer camp for a week with those kids with the that disability CMT going to be spending a week making their lives feel very, very special. It's going to be a lot of fun.

50:19 I can't wait to tell you guys about it. And today's the last day, Please. Today is the last day to vote Podcast awards.com. Please give us your vote. The Podcasting Morning Chat is nominated for two awards, the Adam Curry People's Choice Award and the award, the Education Award, and I would be very grateful for your vote. Go to podcastawards.com, register it is free and only takes a minute to do. Then find us under those two categories. We are in the drop down alphabetically listed under T for the Podcasting Morning Chat. Please give us your vote. If we've helped you at all in any way, I would very much appreciate it. And we're back tomorrow.

51:00 And if you have more than one e-mail address, use them. That's right, sign up again and give us another vote while you're at it. I have a question for you, Mark, before you sign off, you said that you were travelling today, so there's are, are we still doing a show tomorrow? Yes, I will be. I will be doing the show most likely from my car in the morning, from the driveway of my parents, like I used to do when I was travelling a lot back and forth. Yeah, so I'll have my Zoom P4 on the ready and yes, we will have a show tomorrow and that's 7:00 AM Eastern. So until tomorrow, make it a great day. Everybody take care.